What I learned at school

Thursday

May 22, 2008 at 5:00 AM

By Janice Harvey

I&#39;m up to my eyebrows in papers to correct, in final grades to figure for itchy seniors, in the search for creative ways to keep freshmen from believing that summer vacation has already arrived. The end of my first year as a teacher is only weeks away, and if you told me last August that the time would zoom by, I would&#39;ve prayed you weren&#39;t zoomin&#39; me.

The first day of school circa 2007 was one of the scariest of my life, scarier even than the first day of school circa 1960, when I wet my pants during naptime. The kindergarten classroom at Harlow Street Elementary seemed cavernous to a kid who had spent her first four years in a second-floor Lincoln Street flat. In much the same way, my transition from cramped North High to the airy promenade we call Worcester Technical High left me as wide-eyed as a kid on Christmas morning.

Adjusting to the changes in scheduling was my second worry. My first worry was finding my way back to my classroom from the main office. Once I wandered into Building C, I eventually stumbled upon the room I&#39;d been assigned, but I was almost afraid to leave it again. I needed a map and a compass.

There&#39;s a feeling of accomplishment that comes over a first-year teacher on that first day, and it enveloped me as I glanced around the room I&#39;d moved into the previous afternoon. I&#39;d spent a small fortune on posters; Hemingway&#39;s solid jaw and tough-guy persona graced a cabinet door, as did the deceptively demure portrait of Kate Chopin. John Steinbeck&#39;s stats hung next to Toni Morrison&#39;s bio, and all around me, the words of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Langston Hughes offered inspiration and promise. If I could do for these kids what was done for me by my English teachers at South High 35 years ago, I would be successful, I told myself. Back then, teachers like Andy Power and Bill Hynes made the words on the pages dance, and corrected my writing with a merciless red pencil.

I wanted to take from each one of the men and women who taught me a dash of this, a pinch of that. I wanted to be like Mr. Power, whose quiet demeanor belied a sharp wit. It was Mr. Power who allowed me to spread my writer&#39;s wings, grinning as I went off on tangents about books I loved. It was he who plowed through seven-page book reports on the genius of Tennessee Williams, handing them back with a grin. &quot;You&#39;re writing book reviews, not reports,&quot; he told me, helping to nurture, for better or worse, the opinionated columnist I am today. I think about his extraordinary patience now, how he never once shooed me away when I pestered him during his prep period. With every new author I &quot;discovered&quot; I went to Mr. Power to voice my wonder, and always, he responded with like enthusiasm. Surely I was cutting into the 45 minutes he had to prepare for his next batch of learners, but I never felt unwelcome. I wanted to be like Mr. Power.

I wanted to be like Bill Hynes, who, as class advisor, gave final approval of anything I wrote for the annual variety show. Dr. Hynes was the first teacher to truly rein in my ramblings, to chop the fat from my words and teach me that less is usually more. Twenty-five years later, he would write a letter to the editor of this paper praising my column. When I jotted off a note thanking him, I received it in my own mail, corrected in red ink. How I ever let &quot;your&quot; stand in for &quot;you&#39;re&quot; I&#39;ll never know, but it was the last time I made that mistake.

I&#39;ll be rolling up the posters soon, packing up the lessons I created to convey Odysseus&#39;s flawed heroics, Othello&#39;s tragic jealousy and Eugene O&#39;Neill&#39;s long journey. Lennie may take his dream of &quot;tendin&#39; the rabbits&quot; back to the pages of Steinbeck&#39;s classic, but I will never forget the gasps of my freshmen when George pulled the trigger.

The classroom is a different place these days, with MCAS preparation often swamping an English teacher&#39;s chance to instill a love for literature. I hope I was able to ignite some of the passion for it that was lit in me so long ago. I don&#39;t know where the Human Resources roulette wheel will send me this fall; my previous 17 years as an instructional assistant taught me that the lucky combination of seniority, ability and name recognition add up to employment. I don&#39;t know if I hold a winning lottery ticket.

I do know that teaching is everything and nothing I expected; that it is truly a noble calling, and one that has evolved tenfold since my own high school days. Was I wrong to follow that siren&#39;s song?

How could I be? o

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